Frank Oz on Miss Piggy’s Secret Backstory and Jim Henson’s Legacy

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2018

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Frank Oz was a teenager when he started working with Jim Henson, the puppeteer and filmmaker behind the Muppets. Oz went on to create characters like Bert, Cookie Monster, Miss Piggy, and Yoda from “Star Wars.” Michael Schulman is a contributor to The New Yorker and the magazine’s foremost authority on all things Muppet. He takes a trip uptown, to Frank Oz’s home in Manhattan, and talks with Oz about his most iconic characters, moving on after the death of Jim Henson, and what’s missing from today’s Muppets. Plus, The New Yorker’s Naomi Fry recommends three things not to miss on the Internet.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:13.0	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:16.7	Nomi Fry is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and she's our pop culture correspondent.
0:21.6	She writes about internet news and gossip columns and much else, and I trust her to lead me to things that I just might not find otherwise.
0:29.2	Nomi just wrote a piece called The Great Sadness of Ben Affleck, and it stirred the internet into a days-long frenzy.
0:36.8	Poor Ben Affleck.
0:39.6	I'm talking about Ben Affleck.
0:41.9	I feel a sympathy towards Ben, and I was more sort of trying to sort of recount how the
0:49.5	internet, in fact, has treated him.
0:51.3	And I thought...
0:52.3	When you speak of the internet, it's almost as if you're
0:54.2	speaking of this living, breathing, 48-eyed, 19-eared monster. I mean, it's a bit like that, I guess.
1:04.1	Do you have anything to suggest? Yes, yes, I do. I have several things. So the first thing is
1:09.7	the show Big Mouth, which was on Netflix.
1:13.9	Tell me a little bit about the show. So it's an animated show, and it's about puberty.
1:20.9	Oh, God, sounds like hell on wheels.
1:22.7	Who are just, yes, so that moment, that hellish moment is being explored in ways that are both
1:31.5	really vulgar and really sensitive and touching.
1:36.8	So, how do you two know Roland?
1:38.9	Are you dating her?
1:40.1	I only ask because I know Nick, you know, likes her.
1:42.6	Andrew.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.